Today's links

• The death of history's most successful publisher: Google has a scorching case of "main character syndrome."
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Civil War x 4,400 ceramic cats; Okaysellers; Frankenstein hat; Clockwork Fagin; Tracking trackers; "Fever Beach."
• Upcoming appearances: Victoria, Vancouver, Ottawa, Vienna, Kilkenny, Couretnay, Vancouver, Oxford, Sheffield, Virtual, Oxford, Montreal.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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The death of history's most successful publisher (permalink)

I published my first story in 1988, when I was 17 years old. Today, at 55, I've published more than 30 books, with three more coming in the next year or so. In the intervening years, I've spent a lot of time thinking and talking about publishing.

I've had plenty of opportunity to reflect on publishing: I've been a bookseller and worked in libraries, I wrote a column for Publishers Weekly, self-published a few books of my own, published the first-ever book licensed under Creative Commons, and broke several Kickstarter records for audiobook projects. But most of all, I've worked with publishing professionals: publicists, marketing directors, operations people, copyeditors, and, above all, editors.

My first novel editor was the magnificent Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who supported my publishing career from the very start, donating to help send me to the Clarion science fiction writers' workshop and inviting me to come read slush at Tor Books whenever I was in New York. Patrick didn't teach me everything I know about publishing, but he sure taught me a lot about publishing, and hardly a day goes by without my having cause to reflect on one of our many discussions over our decades-long professional and personal association.

Out of all the things I learned about publishing from Patrick, one truth stands out above all: publishing is "the act of making something public." Publishing may or may not involve editing, layout, printing, binding, marketing or other activities that we associate with publishing houses, but publishing always involves identifying a work, identifying an audience, and finding ways to connect that work to that audience.

This definition does a lot of useful work. For one thing, it locates publishing as part of the hard problem of human society, namely, "getting people to care about something that matters to you." Beyond publishing, this is the crux of politics, religion and commerce:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/04/self-publishing/

For another, this definition lets us understand that (for most of its existence) Google was the most successful publisher in human history. No other institution of any kind connected more works with more audiences. Lots of people have heard of Google's wildly unsuccessful motto "Don't be evil," but far fewer are familiar with Google's wildly successful mission statement, "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

But all of that is in the past tense. With its AI projects – AI summaries, the Gemini chatbot – Google has abandoned the practice of "connecting works with audiences." Today, Google's function is to plunder all the works on the internet and chop them up and arrange them in an unimaginably vast, multidimensional array for the explicit purpose of preventing audiences from connecting with those works.

For most of its history, Google operated in a virtuous cycle with publishers whereby they allowed Google to crawl their sites and Google located audiences and connected them with the pages on those sites. Today, that cycle has turned vicious, with Google acting as a parasite that extracts value from the web's publishers and offers nothing in return.

This is entirely in keeping with the enshittification hypothesis: that once a platform is liberated from the disciplining forces of competition, regulation, labor and interoperability, it will squeeze its suppliers and users and harvest all the value for itself:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

But AI represents a new phase in enshittification. Google has assayed enshittificatory gambits in the past, like deliberately worsening its search results in order to force you to search repeatedly, which gave the company more chances to show you ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

But as sleazy as those gambits were, they were profitable. In some important sense, they were sustainable. Assuming Google could carry on indefinitely scamming its users in this way, they'd continue to bring in more cash than they spent, and continue to be the world's most successful publisher, connecting works and audiences (albeit in a deliberately degraded way).

Contrast this with AI, the money-losingest endeavor in the history of human civilization. Google is losing hundreds of billions of dollars on AI. The more AI Google does, the worse the company's financial footing becomes. If Google does this for long enough, it may cease to exist altogether. This collapse can only be prolonged by Google's ongoing extraction of value from web publishers, who no longer have their works connected with audiences via Google search results. Instead, Google usurps those audiences, shows them as many ads as it can, and still loses money in the bargain.

In Tim Wu's Age of Extraction, Wu lays out a thesis about how intermediaries – middlemen who perform a useful function connecting different groups, firms and individuals – are prone to developing "main character syndrome," abandoning their role as facilitators for others and abusing their position to make themselves the prime beneficiary of the transactions they facilitate:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/691177/the-age-of-extraction-by-tim-wu/

Google has a scorching case of main character syndrome, and nowhere is that more obvious than in its AI-fueled transformation into web-scale parasite. The fact that this gambit might well destroy Google and the publishers the company once served – rather than merely enshittifying search with worse results and more ads – makes the whole thing look more like a Mafia bust-out than the enshittification of the first half of the 2020s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out

It's certainly an ignominious end for history's most successful publisher (as was).

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Trump says Google kisses his ass https://www.theverge.com/policy/1013485/trump-google-kiss-my-ass

• Tell Doug Ford: Say NO to Waymo https://techfordemocracy.ca/2026/04/29/say-no-to-waymo/

• Bizarre Blanets and Weird Worlds https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/10/bizarre-blanets-and-other-weir.html

• The Showrunners Network https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spacecommand/the-showrunners-network?ref=8rypb4

• Christian Conman Jim Bakker is Dead https://skepchick.org/2026/10/christian-conman-jim-bakker-is-dead/

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Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Reenacting the Civil War with 44,000 ceramic cats in handmade uniforms https://web.archive.org/web/20011021022729/http://www.phillyburbs.com/intelligencerrecord/news/news_intell/1332513.htm

#20yrsago More on publishing and “okaysellers” https://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/bestsellers_oka/#008116

#15yrsago HOWTO make a Frankenstein hat https://web.archive.org/web/20111022194802/http://deliacreates.blogspot.com/2011/10/hey-frankie.html

#15yrsago Copyright policy in the UK: an evidence-free zone https://www.openrightsgroup.org/publications/cant-look-now-finding-film-online/

#15yrsago Clockwork Fagin on Escape Pod https://delivery-edge.libsyn.com/shows/18601/items/1737698/EP315_ClockworkFagin.mp3

#10yrsago At long last, America’s racist, crazy tough-on-crime prosecutors are losing elections https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2828803

#5yrsago Imperfections in your Bluetooth beacons allow for unstoppable tracking https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/21/sidechannels/#ble-eding

#1yrago Carl Hiaasen's 'Fever Beach' https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/21/florida-duh/#strokerz-for-liberty

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Victoria: Munro's Books, Oct 20
  https://www.munrobooks.com/events/6113620261020

• Vancouver: Life After AI (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 22
  https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/46

• Ottawa: Life After AI (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 24
  https://writersfestival.org/event/life-after-ai

• Vienna: TED AI, Oct 28-30
  https://tedai-vienna.ted.com/

• Kilkenny (Kilkenomics), Nov 6-8
  https://kilkenomics.com/

• Courtenay: Enshittification (Sid Williams Theatre Society), Nov 10
  https://www.sidwilliamstheatre.com/events/cory-doctorow-talks-enshittification/

• Vancouver: BC Policy Solutions Gala, Nov 12
  https://bcpolicy.ca/gala/

• Oxford: Ministry of the Future, Nov 23
  https://ministryforthefuture.co.uk/events.html

• Sheffield: Reverse Centaur at Juno Books, Nov 25
  https://www.outsavvy.com/event/40274/cory-doctorow-in-conversation

• Virtual: Enshittification, AI, and the Future of Technology (UBC Master of Educational Technology), Nov 28
  https://met.ubc.ca/2026/09/met-speaker-series-cory-doctorow-enshittification-ai-and-the-future-of-technology/

• Oxford: Bennett Oxford Symposium on Open Code in Science, Dec 9
  https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/events/2026-bennett-institute-symposium/

• Montreal: World Science Fiction Convention, Sep 2-6
  https://montreal2027.ca/en

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• Life After AI (Brain Bar)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPPa43-n0vI

• Terms of Service with Clare Duffy (CNN)
  https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/terms-of-service-with-clare-duffy/episodes/458ce968-af5d-11f0-b539-13ed2afe25f8

• AI, Work, and Power (Software Engineering Daily)
  AI, Work, and Power https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/podcasts/cory-doctorow-on-ai-work-and-power/

• AI, Corporate Power, and the Fight for Worker Control (Plutopia)
  https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-ai-corporate-power-and-the-fight-for-worker-control/

• How to Think About AI—Before It’s Too Late (Daniel Solove)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0xR3uEgGcc

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Latest books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 514 (27116 total).

• "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - De politie heeft een verdachte aangehouden in de zaak van de overleden 29-jarige Hajar uit Amsterdam, meldt het Amsterdamse OM namens de driehoek. Het gaat om een 23-jarige man uit Somalië, zonder vaste woon- of verblijfplaats.

De vrouw was sinds 4 oktober vermist. Haar lichaam werd afgelopen vrijdag gevonden in het water aan de Amsteldijk in Amsterdam-Zuid. De politie zei eerder al ervan uit te gaan dat ze door een misdrijf om het leven kwam.

BRUSSEL (ANP) - De NAVO stuurt extra "middelen" naar de regio rond de Zwarte Zee, meldt een woordvoerder op X. Daar werden voor de kust van NAVO-landen Bulgarije en Roemenië afgelopen weken meerdere koopvaardijschepen geraakt door drones. Bulgarije vroeg daarom al om extra hulp bij de dronebestrijding.

Volgens de woordvoerder hebben de ambassadeurs van de NAVO-landen dinsdag de situatie op de Zwarte Zee besproken. De extra middelen zijn onder meer bedoeld voor "surveillance, verkenning en forensisch onderzoek", schrijft ze op X.

De Bulgaarse premier Rumen Radev wees na de drone-incidenten naar Moskou. Rusland en Oekraïne beschieten op die zee al langer elkaars schepen, maar koopvaardijschepen bleven meestal gespaard.

Radev sprak donderdag al met de Roemeense president Nicușor Dan en NAVO-chef Mark Rutte over de aanvallen. Dinsdag maakte hij bekend dat de Verenigde Staten op verzoek van Bulgarije een militair vliegtuig hebben gestuurd om te patrouilleren boven de Zwarte Zee.

Redundancies beckon as British Cycling restructures while former cyclists and employees raise concerns over return of ‘toxic culture’

British Cycling’s most successful world track championships campaign in over a decade, in which they topped the medal table in the first qualifying event for the 2028 Olympic Games, was achieved against a backdrop of allegations of misconduct and looming redundancies.

Despite a traumatic buildup to the championships in Shanghai, which saw star sprinter Matt Richardson withdrawn from competition on the eve of the event due to allegations of “discriminatory remarks,” the British squad recovered to win six gold medals, three silver and three bronze medals.

Continue reading...

Continue reading...

Much of Donald Trump’s unpopularity in polls stems from dissatisfaction over the economy and war on Iran

• US politics live – latest updates

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Continue reading...

French state places officers as agents of authority tasked with repressing, rather than managing, public dissent

Familiar images of teargas clouds drifting across Paris squares, police baton charges against masked protesters and terrified teenagers floored – and worse – by stun grenades have once again focused the world’s attention on France’s policing methods.

While most of its western European neighbours generally favour police tactics that prioritise crowd containment and de-escalation, France has long responded to social movements that take to the streets with at times shocking physical force.

Continue reading...

Duke of Sussex says ‘there’s enough drama in the world’ without continuing to have issues with family

The Duke of Sussex wants to repair his difficult relationship with his father and brother, he has said.

Speaking to GQ magazine in New York, Prince Harry said of his complicated relationship with William and King Charles that from a family perspective it was a “massively relatable issue for so many people”.

Continue reading...

A recent incident where Jerry Seinfeld responded to hecklers accusing him of supporting genocide by saying, “I am a racist, it’s a genocide, I’m into it,” showed that the comedian isn’t ashamed to defend his pro-Israel stance. But now the beloved comedian is proving more than ever that he’s not backing down: Jerry Seinfeld has announced that in response to criticism of his support for Israel, he will be dating another 17-year-old. 

Damn! Looks like Israel got a new attack dog, and his name is Jerry Seinfeld. 

During an interview on SiriusXM’s ‘We Got Company,’ Seinfeld doubled down on his defense of Israel, stating, “They say I can’t support Israel. They heckle my performances. They slander me online. But I won’t apologize. In fact, thanks to the constant harassment these people put me through, I will be dating another 17-year-old.”

“I’ve had enough! I thought about doing ‘Unfrosted 2’ to get back at these jerks, but I wanted to go even further,” he continued. “So I will be prowling parks near high schools in search of a new underage girlfriend. I don’t care what my haters think. I don’t care what my wife thinks. And I don’t care what the 17-year-old thinks. We’re going to be in love, and she is going to be 17 and very busty for her age. You thought the age gap was bad when I was 39? Just wait until I have a 17-year-old girlfriend NOW. I’m going to be proud as ever to support Israel and have a 17-year-old girlfriend. Because calling me a racist comes with consequences. And those consequences are 17 years old.”

Whoa! No matter where you stand on the Israel issue/72-year-olds dating children, you’ve gotta admire Seinfeld’s conviction here. 

Looks like when you mess with Jerry, you get the horns. If you’re an anti-Israel activist, you may want to think twice before the next time you heckle Seinfeld.

Entertainer André Pronk zou volgende maand zijn 20-jarig jubileum vieren met een concert in de Stadsgehoorzaal in Vlaardingen. Maar door tegenvallende kaartverkoop gaat het feest niet door. Van de 400 beschikbare kaarten zijn er maar 150 verkocht. "Dat is echt even triest", zegt Pronk tegen Radio Rijnmond.

Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First. “It’s disgusting to put workers at risk by looting. You do it by chipping away at their health benefits and eventually laying them off.”

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

For less-established actors and directors, exile has meant struggling to find their place in the theater world.

We zitten er deze winter tóch warmpjes bij want het vuldoel voor de gasvoorraad is: GEHAALD. Dat kon ook niet anders, want gasminister Stientje van Veldhoven had dat allang verwacht. Die verwachtte immers ook dat we het oude vuldoel van 80% niet zouden halen en toen was zij zo slim om het vuldoel gewoon naar beneden te gooien tot het vuldoel nog maar 64% was. En daar zitten we nu dus al met dank aan het Staatsbedrijf Energiebeheer Nederland, dat wegens gasschaarste een keertje meevult. Vergeet de bibberwinter maar mensen, komende winter kunnen de sokken in bed UIT, kunnen de de vierdubbele truienshirts UIT, kunnen de wanten tijdens het ochtendpoetsen van de tanden UIT, kan uw knuffelrelatie die u aanging met Antonella wegens koud UIT en kan de kachel (met mate) AAN. Wij zetten de verwarming vanmiddag op standje opa en oma (29,9 graden) om het gasgeluk te vieren en bekijken de rekening en bijkomende schade volgend jaar mei wel weer.

An "avalanche of vulnerability reports" is forcing curl to move lower-severity cases into public view, reserving private handling for high and critical flaws. From October 26, low and medium-severity reports should be filed in the open source data transfer tool's public GitHub repository, maintainer Daniel Stenberg said. "Security researchers in doubt can still submit the issue on HackerOne and we can tell them what severity we deem it to be. Over the last few years, over 90 percent of all submissions could quickly be assessed to be less than HIGH." Stenberg already shuttered curl's bug bounty scheme this year as AI-generated submissions piled work onto its security team. Stenberg has previously acknowledged that not all AI-assisted reports are bad, but the workload now demands another response. "This policy change is entirely triggered by the current avalanche of vulnerability reports that keep pouring in. We see no end to them and we do not anticipate this flood to decrease within the next several months. "We are struggling as a project as all key maintainers feel strained, overloaded and brought to the brink of what we can muster. We must act to survive. This is our next step in a survival strategy. It might not be our last. We aim to not drown." Public handling would let more people assess reports, develop fixes, write advisories, and check for related problems before releases ship, Stenberg said. Handling vulnerability reports publicly won't reduce the work per report, he admits, though it could spread the load and make the resulting lessons and documentation easier to find. At least that's the theory. Public disclosure also gives attackers more time to exploit flaws before fixes arrive. The maintainer agrees this is unfortunate yet unavoidable. "We limit this practice to less than HIGH for this reason: at least these problems are not terrible." Stenberg said researchers using AI are generating unusual option combinations unlikely to occur in real applications, then treating minor discrepancies as vulnerabilities. "We can't continue down this spiraling path with our sanity intact. We don't have the bandwidth, manpower or even will to handle a never-ending vulnerability reporting stream at this pace. I believe few software projects can stand this kind of prolonged high volume deluge for extended periods. Something needs to give way." ®

These tiny snakes cartwheel to escape danger "Cartwheeling seems like it should require both arms and legs. But some itty-bitty snakes in Southeast Asia manage it without either."